The harsh policies that the Bolsheviks imposed on the Soviet Union for raison d'état were, as a rule, much less defensible when applied to the other countries of eastern Europe. Agricultural collectivization, industrial centralism, and political terror, however costly or ultimately self-defeating for the Soviets themselves, could be justified as the results of a revolutionary process in which ordinary Russians might have participated, and which worked toward internal strength. However, those same policies, when forced on nations under Soviet control only as a result of post-war occupation, amounted to folly at best and rank oppression at worst. This insight is explored in In the Name of the Great Work, a collected volume that examines the impact of the Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland. The authors of the essays collectively contend that the plan had largely disastrous consequences, characterizing it as a product of Soviet totalitarian hegemony and dictatorial irrationality, but also distorting many of its key features.

The introductory essay by Paul Josephson aims to provide a historical background for the Great Stalin Plan, although his treatment elides the Great Stalin Plan with Stalin's program of rapid industrialization and therefore omits much of the Plan's distinct character. Absent in the text is a discussion of the long history of Russian afforestation on the dry southern steppes, the plan's origins in Soviet forest protection agencies, the successful effort by the plan's designers to wrest control away from Trofim Lysenko, or the plan's modest accomplishments. Instead, Josephson redefines the Stalin Plan as “a series of government resolutions for dam, reservoir, canal, forestry, roadway, and other construction projects, some of which dated to the 1930s,” although the plan was not announced until 1948 (2). As a result, many essential aspects of the Great Stalin Plan are ignored, including its cultural, nationalist, ecological, and political dimensions—all of which played a role when the plan was exported to eastern Europe.

The next essay in the volume, by Doubravka Olšaková and Arnošt Štanzel, explores the Great Stalin Plan in Czechoslovakia, arguing that the plan as implemented there was more moderate and conservationist than its Soviet counterpart, although it should be said that this contention is based on a simplified understanding of the original proposal. The authors characterize the Great Stalin Plan as “monstrous,” and in contrast point to Czechoslovak rhetoric that emphasized “useful subjugation” rather than Soviet transformation, reflecting intentions that the authors contend were less violent or rough. They trace this ameliorating tendency to the continuity of progressive Czechoslovak ideas about nature conservation from the interwar period. However, this conclusion ignores an almost identical conflict between conservationists and scientific radicals in the Soviet Union at the same time. With national approaches to nature as their primary explanatory mechanism, the authors allow intriguing questions to go unanswered: why did the Czechoslovak government begin their efforts in September 1948, before the Soviets announced the plan, and why did they accelerate the pace of their efforts after Stalin's death in 1953 rather than discontinue them, as the Soviets did? The dynamic at work was likely more complicated than mere resistance to external domination.

The second essay and third essays, about Hungary and Poland respectively, draw more ambiguous conclusions about the fate of the Great Stalin Plan in eastern Europe. Zsuzsanna Borvendég and Mária Palasik, writing about Hungary, cast their net beyond the Great Stalin Plan to discuss crop acclimatization and hydroelectric dam construction, but as for the elements of the Great Stalin itself, they conclude that “despite its mostly irrational ideas, nature transformation did have some positive results for Hungary,” because “afforestation and the establishment of protection forests in the 1950s [proved] to be valuable endeavors” (187, 197). Beata Wysokińska writes that the plan “actually had little influence on farming and forestry practices,” but because Poland had been significantly deforested by the war as well as by pre-war Polish forestry practices, the planting of 5.4 million trees coincided with a Polish interest in reforestation (226).

In general, two common problems recur throughout the volume: the authors use the term “Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature” to refer to Stalinist economic development as a whole, and they work from the assumption that the Great Stalin Plan was the work of Trofim Lysenko. In truth, the Great Stalin Plan was the result of a scientific struggle inside the Soviet government, initiated by those who worried about the dangers of Stalin's industrial policies, and who resented Lysenko's interference in their work. The plan was accompanied by a considerable amount of bombastic propaganda, but at its core was an intention to protect and improve Russian hydrology. The authors effectively point out that the plan, designed with specifically Russian conditions in mind, failed to transform nature in eastern Europe when exported there, but their true item of concern is Soviet economic and scientific imperialism. The Great Stalin Plan, with its emphasis on afforestation, was among the least harmful aspects of Soviet domination.